


please stop running now (just let me be the one)

by Anecdoche (so_psychso)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Call me a tree cuz we be pining!!!, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Meta, Obligatory use of Orpheus and Eurydice, er... it's Jon wandering the increasingly obscure Lonely in search of Martin and its Emo, more like plot with meta, of a sort, theyre in love and im sad, unreality, wait thats just regular writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 03:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21129725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_psychso/pseuds/Anecdoche
Summary: What is faith to an Archivist?Jon must best the obscurities of the Lonely to save Martin. He doesn’t quite realize how lost he becomes along the way. Or… maybe he just doesn’t mind.





	please stop running now (just let me be the one)

**Author's Note:**

> My first official work in the fandom, hope it's up to snuff! Unbeta'd "meta" so concrit is welcome. Enjoy~

What is faith to an Archivist? 

To: 

\- the watcher 

\- the cataloger

\- the objectivist

\- the _ I-will-know-you _

The Eye exists to portend. Its acolytes serve to sate and, in turn, are slaked of their own emaciations. Engorged grey-matter. Beholden _ to _ , knowing _ of _ . There’s no room for conjecture. It is feast, it is feasted. And this is fate, in the grip of pupil-pitch and iris split. This is the price: flesh of a different sort, certainly, but still no less than a pound, and often more. And more. Whatever the Eye wants, whatever it sears its sights into. It leverages ultimatums that, really, never offer a choice at all. And that is blindness, isn’t it? But what can be _ known _ of that. Is that faith?

It must be. It _ must _ , elsewise he would not keen so searchingly for it in this ensconsement, the cathode-ray _ blip _ of himself from Beholding into Nothing at all. No _ watch _ , no _ known _. 

_ where are you _

Is _ that _ faith?

Never has he wondered so very, _ brutally _ much, and there is neither tape nor trauma to sustain him. No supplement.

Just him. Just the… _ Around _ and its vague niceties: enough to grant him a beating pulse, breath, the panic _ sting _ at his brainstem and the backs of his knees. Which give. Give way, to an un-harsh ground that rattles his bones.

He recalls ribs.

And cracks the memory between his teeth like strychnine, swallows it down. There is no more an anchor in them than there is mooring in this place, and the ground against his shattered knees ripples obligingly. As if with laughter. If it’s a joke, though, it’s a sick one. Disease stricken sans the convenience of corruption (and he bloody _ hates _ nuance).

But, blessedly objective, there is no sound here. No _ knock knock _ . Who’s there? It’s me, it’s _ me _ , I’ve come to - to - _ oh _…

It is this he offers up in this lonesome place, his first offering. It is small. Manageable. He can endure another.

“Oh,” and the air of his lungs fills to crystal vapor in front of his face and joins the static fray. 

He wonders how much it would take to fill this place with unyielding, deflated surprise. He couldn’t gasp it in his lifetime, he’s sure of that, not even the one afforded by the Eye. Perhaps it has resulted from all that the Lonely has taken. Perhaps Martin is amidst the mist, his plaintive pleas, his resigned acceptance; surely it lurks in suspension. And maybe, Jon thinks, he can follow it, the miasmal trail of Martin’s loss and waiting. 

He did not go willingly. Jon needs not his patron to know this. And he will refuse to return the same. This is not a place of the self. It is entirety in the way the Eye is not. There is no one to behold, and so it is best to become that, too. 

That, Jon knows, is the faith of the Lonely. 

But it is not his.

He doesn’t… know _ what _ is, of course. Of _ course _ , it can’t be so simple. So much of this operates via antithesis, but _ that _ couldn’t deign to be as bloody easy, could it?

In a fit of catharsis, in a dream of rage, he digs his fists into the giving ground and screams an unheard wail. Tears do not chart their coursing for his cheeks; they well up behind his eyes, instead, burning and impregnable. And he knows it is futile, so he clings to it for sustenance, for a certainty. 

_ I do not know this. _

_ This is good. _

It’s the least nebulous conclusion he can come to. 

Or.

No, wait.

_ I cannot know this. _

_ this _ ** _is_ **

It’s a stark revelation, and another gush of air punches from his chest like a bullet wound, a buckshot spray. But this is of relief, of something shifting into place, setting up, settling down. Finding root.

And so he is not shocked when the city looms up around him, abrupt and alabaster. Vaulting marble; ruinous in its construction. Vicious fenestrations: porticos vivisecting stairwells, lunettes gouged out by parapets. He rather pants in a panic as a spiny column narrowly avoids skewering him when it thrusts up mere inches in front of his penitent knees, but that’s all, really. Self preservation cannot exist where there is no real _ self _. 

And, all things considered (and there’s very few of those left) it’s a more creative manifestation than he would have given the Lonely credit for. Statements always offered more… obvious alienations: dissonant crowds and lurking fogs.

There is something… disjointed here, a question mark where a full stop should rest. 

_ is that - ? _

What it is, is dark. He didn’t notice at first. Or perhaps it had not quite settled. It is not so permeating as the blackened beast, itself, the one that tore through Robert Montauk, but it _ is _, and it shrouds the facade around him in a perverse sort of gloaming, a mimicry of twilight. Or is it dawnbreak? It doesn’t matter, there will be no eventual light to dissuade the dark, and with it, there ebbs any hope he may have had of navigating the city, ceaseless though it may be. He knows it to be. 

Funny, that. On these uncertain terms, he is allowed to grasp these errant sinews, if only to better carve out the depth in his stomach, a bottomless pit into which his heart may sink as long as it likes. 

_ Did you wander this? Are you lost, now? _

Heaving, shuddering, vapor-between-the-teeth-grimacing, he lets himself fall, slowly forward, till his forehead is pressed to the column. 

Save, it is not there anymore, swallowed up by the dark, and he sprawls forward, the shout of his surprise echoing out for miles around him, through the marble metropolis, troubling its placid spires and stairs with the non sequitur of his presence. 

Again, “_ oh _” but there’s a twinge of pain. It feels… good. 

_ this is _

He welcomes the hurt, through his nose, between his eyes, ringing in his head. Another certainty, another handhold. And he could lie there and relish it, let it soothe through his skull, entire, curl up - fetal and fragile - on the threshold of this city and wait for its consumption. But it grows too dull, the pain, too quickly, and he thrusts himself onto his elbowskneeshandsfeet, chasing the splintering heat.

It sends him reeling, a scarring _ lance _ from scalp to spine, and he _ laughs _.

Even in the darkness, he closes his eyes as mirth spills like an oil-slick from his tongue, so thick and insistent that the vapor cannot budge back in. And when he spends himself on hiccups and a cramped stomach - too tight for his heart to plummet through, now - he opens again his unseeing eyes and -

Well, would you bloody look at that?

He actually sees.

Not - not _ that _ . Not like _ that _, which he has to momentarily remind himself in the fit of pique that seizes his hope. Just… sees, plainly, a faint, leering glow, beckoning to him from so very, very close away. 

It’s just weak enough to deny a greater scope of the city, but does detail the long, gutted out passageway he must travel to reach it. Distinctly, he recalls the perverse architecture of the tunnels. But the Lonely need not be so convoluted. It thrives well enough on the delusions its faithful conspire for themselves, and he is _ nothing _ if not dutiful.

It is not his faith, no, but he follows it like an apostle, drags his feet atop the smooth marble, staggers his palms against the slick-hewn walls that jut beside him. It is decidedly _ not _ reminiscent of Smirke’s maddening work in all aspects save one. 

See, he knows - when the city rose up around him - he was in a courtyard of some… proportion or other, but now there is only this hallway, and the coaxing light at the end of it. 

And he reaches it.

And it is a well. 

Or.

Rather.

It is a crude pantomime of one, nothing more than a hole in the ground - he does _ not _ think of shipwrecks and Fairchilds - and from it pours the light, carving a column all its own through the darkness. 

_ Oh _, unsaid this time, but with just as little vehemence, and he stares, trying to suss it out. 

The Lonely truly is more curious than he could have anticipated. Not that he really _ did _ . His agenda rather did not entail _ this _ particular foray into the anathema. 

_ Huh _. 

A curious choice of word, there, but it was not offered aloud, so no one can bear the consequences beyond him. And there _ is _ no one beyond him, anyway. And - 

_ Is this it? Did he take you here? Is this the finality of the Lonely? Why an illumination? Why - ? _

_ oh _

Really, he should have guessed from the start, the second that first question battered into his brain, but that last will do. And, suddenly, there is a sledgehammer, resting idly by the edge of the well-of-painfully-metaphorical-light, and he _ itches _ to pick it up, to beat in the circumferential marble, to spread the contents before him, to unveil the city of its funeral shroud and take it _ take it _ . Into himself. Into the empty, cavernous _ self _ that is his _ nothing-for-the-eyes _. 

He gets so far as to actually pick the damn thing up and hoist it overhead, poised to strike a bone masticating blow. But - 

_ this is not _

What he is here for - _ who _ he is here for. 

He lowers it, arms quaking with ravenous exertion, but he succeeds, gravity working in his favor, taking pity, and it pulls the hammer to his feet, then the edge of the well, and when he lets go, he watches it tumble into the pallid, quartzine depths. And it falls and falls into sight, never out, an un-disappearing act in the dazzling screech of the well’s light. 

He watches, he _ watches _.

_ this is not _

Desperate, he wrenches free his pulsing gaze and buries it in the palms of his hands. There responds a distinct _ suturing _ of something, a rip and _ meld _ in grotesque tandem, but he does not look again until he is sure. And, sure enough, the well has sealed over, closed its sclera of white, swallowed up the hammer, whole. Left him to nothing and no one.

_ that is not: _

_ \- true _

_ \- helpful _

\- _ going to work you son of a bitch, Eye _

He’s got the pick of the litter, and he takes all three, burning between his ribs with a razing anger, phantom marrow ablaze. Doubling over, he gasps another cloud of vapor, clutching the easier of the three aches in his cheststernumabdomen. It’s the latter he claims in a vice grip of his arms. He’ll work his way further, up, as will the ache, but for now, it rests easily in his stomach. Gut-instinct, as it were.

And he does so, aches and clutches, in the cloying embrace of black and the anticipation of the city around him. It’s there, and does not need to be seen to be known, so… why not? Why not wander it. Why _ bloody _ not.

_ is that - ? _

(Of a sort, Archivist. You’re getting there.)

The word triptych forms unbidden in his mind, in his addled-sick head, and he resolves not to forget this well and its light. But neither will he succumb beside it. It is closed now, and can do no further harm to this city, to himself or - or… 

He will leave it and not look back because… well there’s just nothing to see, isn’t there? 

_ is not there _

Which means there are others elsewhere, other answers and their hurdles. And there is Martin, somewhere. _ Surely _ . Perhaps in this city, even, and all Jon needs to do is walk. That’s why he came here at all, isn’t it? _ Who _he came here for. Of course, it can’t be so cut and dry as that. That would be far too easy, far too unfair in this grand, grueling scheme of the Lonely and the Eye. But he came here, and it is for Martin.

_ it is _

Yes. He’s starting to get it now. The well and its light was the first (test, ache, see, _ faith _) and he denied it. For Martin. This is how he takes a first step, then another, circumventing the vague outline of the well, of what he can recall from it burned into his eyelids. But as he limps further from it, blinks more and more into the mire of darkness and the burnt quartz smell of encasing marble, the sigil of it fades until it is nothing more than a dull, grey pulse petering out to periphery. Like an evening’s mist demures to sunrise.

And then: the darkness lifts; he can see. 

Knowing not how far he has travelled and least of all for how long - still, somehow, he is at the edge of the implausible city. He wants to turn round and know if the darkness still shrouds the sprawl, but something begs him not to. Something tugs and yearns, and he lurches forward before he can get his head even halfway turned. 

He falls again, but this is a decidedly more docile spill, his knees, his palms, cushioned by a rupture of glass green water, splaying up in rivulets around him, dampening his face. A perfect substitute for sorrow he cannot spill. 

It’s hardly deep, the water. From what he feels, as he hangs his head between the tremor of his shoulders, a rough, concrete plane sits some three inches beneath the surface, and it is upon this he is braced, hands and knees again, puzzling and puzzled and wanting _ desperately _ to look back and see the city. But it is not the consequence anymore. Relevance. It is no longer for him. He has bested it, and he must continue.

_ this is - _

(Conviction. Yes, Archivist.) 

It’s a different sort, almost untenable, but what in any of this is easy? And besides, there are more immediate questions to rectify, namely, this odd, endless body of water that stretches out in front of him, beside him, its tide nigh indistinguishable from a fathoms-off horizon thick hanging with an anemic pallor. If the city is no longer there, then he suspects the water and its sky maroon him from behind, as well, but he cannot sate that answer beyond a hope, beyond a fai-

And then, beneath him - where he did not think to wonder after the water - the concrete slab upon which he shakily balances _ breathes _. No sound accompanies it, no exhale of bubble erupts from it. In fact, it does not even move. But it breathed. He felt it, expanding under his fingernails, bulging up to meet him, troubling the sinister serenity of the water’s surface with minute ripples. 

He remains very, very still.

An incalculable number of shallow pants clamber up his throat, slip through his teeth, tallying the passage of time between the inhale of this slab beneath him and his tarrying for another, for the proof that he is not mad. 

It does not.

Not… this one.

But another does, far out in front of him, and he finally, fully braves the sight beyond him, lifts his head, to see how truly ceaseless the water cascades and the cement protuberances that sprout in uneven, infectious, _ riddling _ profusion from its paltry depths. 

There are, he estimates, millions of them, lurking, geometric cuts of hard, immutable slabs, littered as far as he can throw his vision, skulking beneath the water in an infinity all their own.

And one of them, he knows, is breathing. Like the one beneath him did. But it will not breathe again. It will not permit him that satisfaction, that… sanity.

Or, perhaps, he thinks, sans an ounce of _ that _ but with a steady, rising <strike> conviction </strike> , perhaps it just… can’t. Perhaps the _ thing _ that was smothered on the wrong side of _ up _, that does not brace as he does above the waterline… perhaps it has found another place of entombment. 

This reels his mind, like a solitary hook cast to mesopelagic depths. Vexes him. Inspires fists from his fingers, draws blood from the wounds his nails carve into the concrete between themselves and the now lonesome space where the breathing thing gasped.

But this - this is not a thing of suffocation, of overindulged lungs. The breathing thing is still doing _ that _, and does not… suffer… in the ways with which he is familiar, that… cacophonous coffin in his earslungsnails. 

No. It is not buried. 

It is searching.

For:

\- escape?

\- release?

\- sympathy?

\- <strike> faith </strike>

And he must. Escape it. Release it. Sympathize. <strike> _ Know _ </strike> _ . _

He can feel it breathing, embraced in the water, entangled in cement. It is _ here _ , it is _ somewhere _ , and he can _ know _it if he wants.

And he does. He _ does _. Like the city and its the well; the plummeting hammer. 

Sight does not goad him this time, but _ this _ is no less ravenous, the voracious unlidding of his mind to find it _ find it _ _ f _

_ it is there _

(Where, Archivist? Is it, really?)

It is not. Not _ there _. Not that distance off, anymore, wrenched out by the horizon line. At least… not that one, the one he can see, in front of him, skirting circumferential.

_ oh _

Like he’s back at the _ bloody _start of it.

And all he has to do is turn around. Because, against the contrite supplication of his spine, the weight of that wheeze beneath no two-of-the-same slabs presses and cajoles, suffocating so _ sweetly _, and makes him hunger for air, too, though he pulls it ragged all the same between his grinding molars.

Because he has to _ know _.

He starts, and stops, and starts again, neck screaming in an agony he cannot appreciate, cannot spare his precious attention to. He’s going to turn around, and he’s going to see the thing that breathes. 

Ultimately, it is not his decision, not voluntarily. Merely, his elbows suddenly bow out, and a great, sucking gravity pulls at him face first into the water, acquainting him _ intimately _ with its sinister depths. Asphyxiate black. 

He recalls - through blind, thrashing panic - it takes only six centimeters to drown a child, and the water boasts an extra few to its favor. Similarly, he is afforded none of his reflexes beyond a helpless flailing, so it easily fills in his nose, the space between his gnashing teeth. It’s not enough to submerge him, fully, so he hears his feeble struggle, the impassivity of the water spraying up and around him, roaring, cascading, scouring out his lungs, making a home of them.

_ You terrify me, _ he thinks, as his throat ignites with the wet. 

_ And that is enough _.

Like the well, like before, like _ behind _ him, there arrives a great ceasing of each acrimonious nerve, a blessed dulling and displacement of water with air, and he breathes like the breathing thing does not. Breathes for _ him _ , and himself, and not for the behind ( <strike> behold </strike>) or the immensity of other places where the breathing thing will try, in vain, to seek out its resolution. 

He rears back, soaked hair tangling in his eyes, mouth curling around a gurgling howl, heaving and savoring all the precious air he pleases. And pleas for. 

_ this is _

(It could be a prayer. It is not.)

“_ Christ _.”

He spits out a stomachful of the glass green water. 

_ The color of a mirror _, he thinks drunkenly, sick on oxygen. 

But he sees no reflection in its resilience, the small maelstrom lapping at his wrists as he braces himself on his palms, against the concrete slab which will not move again, and whose duplicates he will not seek out, will not search them for the breathing thing.

His is the only breath that matters. _ His _, too, and now Jon knows how close he is. 

He thinks again in thirds:

\- seeing

\- knowing

\- … 

Had he not bested his own patron in its past two gambles, its bloodied hands and royal flayings, he might find a more succinct irritation, a precise rage with which to address his inability to compel foresight to himself and surmise the finality in this. He can’t simply call it to himself, can he, must raze the trail of his own volition.

(How long have you forgotten autonomy? Archivist? J-)

_ I’m so close. _

(You are.)

_ It is - _

(Rather, isn’t it?)

Swaying, still swollen with air and its inebriate succor, he levers back onto his heels and rises, wincingly, to his feet. Staggers. Stumbles. But the water slows the momentum, and the slab beneath him is solid. 

And no longer is the water beyond him so endless, so concise in its meeting of horizon to glass green meniscus. At this height, between them, just so, just _ enough _ , a thin stripe pronounces itself, a discoloration between the etiolation. He cannot know what it is, but he trusts it is something _ else _ . It _ is _, and he believes it.

(Just a matter of perspective, isn’t it?)

With this (vision, conviction, [...] , <strike> _ faith _ </strike>) he moves toward it. 

That first step brings him to the edge of the slab. Another juts at an annoying albeit sturdy enough angle, and he abandons this one behind him, balancing himself on the teasing edge of the new one in front. It swiftly joins the other, in being behind, and he forgets their nauseating constructions the second his sole rises from them for the last step. 

It must be at least a thousand he treads over, keeps his back to, in as straight a line as he can manage, but the intermittence between sky and water spans for ages from left to right, so there’s no real threat of losing it. 

He’s determined to keep this course, though, clinging to a supposition that _ this _ is the right way, _ this _ is the one he must follow. 

Or is he leading? He never actually considered the latter, just assumed his place in the act of pursuit. He considers doing so, now; the slab he traverses is perfectly level, a fine place to halt and ponder, as far as things go. 

But he did not notice it was the last one, did not realize the space jarring apart land and sky has rushed up to meet him, already.

It is land, solid and sloping away from the waterline, thick with grass and the heady smell of rich, damp earth sifting between each mist burdened blade. Dispossessed of every prior thought, he wants nothing more than to plunge his hands into it, tear up great clumps and smell the sharp sting of green. _ Green _. Not glass and mirror falsities. Not concrete or marble.

He all but scrambles up the embankment, staining the fabric of his knees and palms with turgid _ green _, and reaches the crest of it sans much consideration for time. It’s still blessedly sooner than he did not think to assume, and, before him, roiling with a patchwork turmoil of thunderclouds overhead, hill upon hill in every shadow of green and grey and brown and sage rolls away from his own, meager peak. Heather washes over in great swaths of diffident purple and muddles with what he can only guess - what for the ochre lashing - is gorse, fragrant and beautiful and sharp. 

Around him, a swift and tearing wind mourns along heavy gusts, billowing under his shirt, through his scalp, whipping his hair skyward and wild, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. It carries gorse-sting with it, pricking at his eyes, coaxing tears that still - won’t - spill.

The last of this - the final third - waits here for him, somewhere, looming and lurking, burnt black as the city was white, dry as the breathing cement was drenched, stolid as he is _ not _ \- himself determined to wander these hills, content to, even in their tumultuous, writhing beauty of green and grey. 

Finality murmurs in the cradle of this storm ravaged valley, poises like the rain that won’t yet tumble from the grey heavens to the green grave below. He need only find it. And then - and then… 

_ It will be _

(Yes, Archivist. Yes Jo-)

At some, unknowable passing of time, he slips and trips his way down the other side of the embankment. There is comfort in its presence behind him, a surety of what is there, and so it cannot vy away his precious attention. Or perhaps he’s far too gone anymore to feel its familiar goading, to cherish it, _ worship _ it.

Free, faithless, he wends an untrodden trail woven between the rise and plummet of green and grey, the hills towering and lolling in equal disquietude, their misshapen, earthen forms hewn in a facade of _ just-out-of-view _ such that he finds his pace quickening, neck craned to see round a flare of gorse, a push of earth, only to find another blocking his view. The path takes him over, occasionally, such that he cannot forget the country that sprawls, so open atop, so concealed below, an uncanny valley between the cloister of that city and the vicious span of that water. 

And forever beyond him, _ it _ beckons, a siren sigh of _ you-can-find _ and _ you-will-know _ carried by the wind, blooming pollen from the heather, itching at his eyes and staining his knuckles where he rubs at them.

He finds it, of course. As was promised, maybe even prophesied?

_ is that _

(Of a sort, yes.)

And it is not everything that he could expect.

It, simply, is a chimney. He thinks. In fact, he quite relishes the initial doubt but… it’s a short lived mirth. The shape is too regular, too starkly dark amidst the green-grey, and far too pronounced atop the hill upon which it perches some million kilometres away. Or so it feels.

And, all at once, the spry adrenaline that had carried him this far wrenches itself clean from his pulse, and a smothering exhaustion usurps its absence, withering down to his marrow with a deep suffusion of _ impossible _ and _ can’t-do-this _.

He collapses there - ever reliably to his knees - on the summit of the hill that holds him as far from the strange, implacable structure as he could possibly be.

Technically, he _ could _ be further, but he didn’t know of the chimney when he first limped through the city, when he slunk from the water. Nor can it inflict much relevance, now. He can’t turn back. He _ won’t _ . He is so _ close _.

And.. there is what he _ can _ do. Can stay here, shins buried in the earth, wind scouring him for the heavens. And he can bring the chimney to himself. For the completion, for the faith, _ for _ <strike> _ m _ </strike>

And there is what he should do. Should not stay here, legs decaying in the earth, wind flaying him skyward. And he can go to the chimney, himself. For completion, for uncertainty, for <strike> M </strike>

It is a visceral obelisk, the chimney, sprouting there from the throne of its hill, unyielding brickwork intricately rendered despite the distance of his vision. Black, crusted, laden with the latent corpse of some fantastic conflagration. Tendril smoke wisps tear up around it in spectral remembrance. Like cenotaphs. Like souls. 

The are not, though. He sees, knows, does _ not _ call them forth, but _ oh _ how he pales at the prospect of dragging his feet over hill over hill over _ hill _ when so _ easily _ he could call the construct to himself, lay down at its hearth, sleep to ash and be sated in that culmination.

He could pray to it, if it wanted. He’d mold a faith from it; that moldering spire, monumentally rotting in the mud. 

_ is this _

(If you make it so.)

In defiance, in the last vestigial _ cling _ of hope, he - does - not. 

Does not call the chimney to himself, bending will to his whim, rending apart the hills to make easier this last task, this last cutting of the sutures, silent sclera and breathless bate. 

Does _ not _ wallow, search penance out of pity, as the thick grass tries to take seed in the topsoil of his skin. 

Does not think, even, of the _ behind _ , only that he conquered it to be here, and it has left him exposed, gaping and raw and wonderfully _ wounded _ . Like an animal. Like a human. Like one who has searched for so long and found, at last, the truth of their efforts, the soft underbelly of triumph, the prospect of _ no-longer-alone-if-I-make-it-so _.

The chimney is not that triumph. Of course it is not. It was only ever the symbol, the sigil of _ burnt-out _ and _ blood-shot _, and in the compelling of himself - the determination of footfalls grinding gorse to dust and heather to compost - it no longer boasts such a feat. Such a distance. He rather reaches it in three, precise gasps. 

The steps are, ultimately, irrelevant, over green and grey, and soon, _ so soon _, he is gasping his fourth, braced beside the chimney and staring down at the meek figure curled by its grate.

_ It is. _

(Yes.)

Seeing, knowing, _ bringing _. Of that figure to himself, embracing the body in his hands, his arms, to his chest as the green and grey carves up a frenzied gale around them.

Here, beside his crumbling, useless faith, in the melee of the Lonely, in the fallout of the Eye, he has found him. Martin. Friend. _ Else _ , something _ else _ , but he cannot care to figure that out just yet, not in this precious moment of bliss and relief. There is only _ them _ and the faint but resolute decimation of everything else around them.

Whatever abstraction the Lonely has seized him in, though, it’s enough to prevent his waking as Jon shivers to his knees and holds him clumsily, _ honestly _ . Blessedly, Peter is nowhere, no tinnitus _ shrill _ of his awful presence, no presence, at all, save his own and Martin’s. 

“I… I think I found you,” Jon says, so quiet that the wind almost tears it clean away. “I think this is… that we can -”

Open wounded _ bleeding _ raw and honest, he buries his face in Martin’s slack shoulder, and breathes deep the ozone smell still lingering on his person, the awful cologne one can’t help attaining in the proximity of a Lukas, in the throes of their God. An _ else _ smolders beneath it, though, recalling Jon to hidden tomes, bergamot worry and the solid, warm hand that carries it over in a spilling, stained mug. 

He pulls away, shocked by the sheerness of his friend, somehow so reassuring even in suspension, even without the clarity to offer over that lopsided smile, flushed at the freckles.

And he looks so peaceful, Martin does, at ease here in the Lonely. If it were only his, Jon’s embrace, would he look the same? Would he _ be _ so still. 

No, he wouldn’t. Because that is not them. That is not _ Martin _. 

_ This. Is. Not. _

And it… changes… around them. The storm… _ recoiling _ almost, as though it has been struck. Jon braces, expecting a deluge of retaliation, but it never comes. It stays in shock, and waits for him to act. 

“Oh,” he exhales, pulls a crisp breath in its place.

“I know how,” he says. “I,” he looks down at Martin, still and restful. 

“And - and,” blathering, blundering, he pushes a lock of fallen ginger curls out of Martin’s eyes.

They are motionless, seized without dreaming, just waiting. Waiting. 

“And you’re just going to have to trust me,” Jon croaks, swallows, wets his cracked, dry lips. “Okay? Just trust me, Martin.” 

There is no answer. Nor has he any chance of earning one. He has to trust, too. And he does. He _ does _.

_ This is faith _.

So complete does the revelation settle into his bones, that he almost relishes the task it will take to retrace his steps, the slog and _ burden _ he must endure to go back, back to the beginning and <strike> know </strike> that Martin is following him. 

Of course, there must be a catalyst; metaphor only operates insofar as to inspire. There necessitates a _ spark _ to it all, and he has more than a hunch burning a hole in his pocket. 

Carefully, slowly, he lays Martin back down upon the earth, away from the grate of the chimney, but not too far. There’s a trick to frostbite very few people realize. Too often, one wants to assuage that vicious, bitter sting with heat, direct and scorching and soothing till you’ve blistered the skin entirely. It’s the thaw that matters, the gentle rivulets of cool to warm, easing life back in. Pulse and synapse fire. 

So, although Jon wants nothing more than to pile thickly the grate with as much tinder as he cannot find in this lush, awful valley, he heeds his instincts, and tears only a few small handfuls of grass, sprinkling it into the mouth of that leering chimney. From his searing pocket, he retrieves the lighter, its cobwebs almost indistinguishable in the grey-gloom light of this place. But he needn’t see it to know its uses, to feel its wheel, coarse and catching against his thumb. 

He tosses the thing, entire, into the grate, stays only a second to ensure a few blades have been ensnared in hungry flame. Then, he stands, and, at last, he turns around, and he begins walking.

Abrupt is the un-absence of the chimney. Oh, he knows it’s there, and he would delight in its desiccation, its ruins in the flames, would _ adore _ to tear it up and smell the petrichor that leaks from its wounded roots, but the fire is not for him. He needn’t thaw out, doesn’t need to come back to himself, search out the faith. He weathered his strides, already, like fingerprints in dust never before perturbed, sending motes to clutter up the sunrays in a whole new view of the world, of himself, of what he can make of this. And he can trace them again, forge the path again, easier, this time, so Martin can follow.

And he will.

_ This is faith _.

He all but lopes across the landscape, not quite running, windswept and damp, his feet finding unfamiliar grooves in the dirt and grass and heather and gorse. He reaches that first embankment with tentative conviction wavering behind him, and, though he wants to leap from grass to un-breathing cement, he pauses, better thinks it through, and, keeping one foot on the grass, he steps the other forward, sinking it into the placid glass gleam of the water. 

Off in the distance, a terrible, pounding rumble kicks up along the horizon he did not see before. It is thick, spanning out in a jittering silhouette. Something moves, plummets, where the city is, where it waits to be traversed again, conquered at last, and Jon smirks, wry and cold to himself, delighting in the thought of the suffering that facade of marble must bear witness to. 

But he remembers who is behind him, who has not seen these strange sights yet, nor limped the landscapes and discovered their symbolisms. So he swallows down his pride, and kicks off the embankment, steadying both feet in the water, upon the slab. And he knows the action is followed.

When they make it to the next slab, the next stepping stone in this long, angular _ jut _ of strangulated cement, the storm at the far end of the water explains itself, and Jon nearly shrieks as something explodes from behind, pulverizing the single solidity bridging the gap between water and hill. He need not turn to know what has occurred - he _ won’t _ \- nor must he puzzle for very long to understand what caused it.

To his left, in the sulk of his periphery, another slab explodes in a spray of water and debris, the creeping angles and smug placidity of the water ruptured by the plummeting trajectory of a falling sledgehammer. It’s not the same one from before. Couldn’t be. Too many fall, suddenly, to be a single _ one _: duplicates enough to sate the destruction of the myriad slabs and their sick wheezings. 

He always did like storms, and Martin never failed to comment on the coziness of a day amidst the Archives while driving rain secluded them indoors.

This particular storm is closing in, and fast, at all sides, from the horizon behind and in front. But he is not scared, not worried. He knows a temper tantrum when he sees one, and the Lonely won’t relinquish them without a petulant show of force.

“You can’t have us anymore,” he says to it, leering at the unseaming sky and its pathetic deluge of such a crass metaphor.

“Bastard,” he mutters, grinning canine to canine, and he pushes on, kicking the water out of his way, no longer mindful of its reticence, no longer caring. 

He reaches the horizon, breathless and soaked and alive with a most gratifying anger. And the hammers pour down around him, and the city, enshrined again in darkness, offers only a battered and chipped threshold against the lip of the water, a marble step, up into its labyrinth. 

As a last ditch, the slab beneath his feet _ dares _ to scream, nearly pitching him off balance, but some <strike> one </strike> catches his elbow, steadies him. And through the sour waft of stricken marble, honeyed bergamot fills his head with a glow so sweet and simple, that finally, _ finally _, it lets loose his tears, and he sobs with unwavering gratitude.

“We’re almost there,” he says, hoisting himself up into the city, eyes beautifully blinded by stinging, warm salt. 

He wants to offer his own hand, wants it more than anything, but there’s no need, and there is still one, last stretch. 

“Tell Smirke to eat his heart out, huh?” He talks aloud as he leads them in the dark-cloaked metropolis. 

Overhead, the raucous din of bludgeoning hammers carves out an unsteady beat, and he wonders what they are destroying, if not the alleys, the courtyards, the streets around them. He doesn’t care anymore than that, though. They’ll have the whole of it soon enough, break the dark to dusk, the marble to dust. And they will be long, _ long _ gone.

“It’s this way,” he says, retracing the well’s epitaph inside his eyelids. 

Blind with faith, he finds the cloistered, cramped corner it resided in, pauses to sneer at its sewn-shut-sclera, and then it is just the hallway, just that last stretch of buckling marble.

It is, by far, the darkest of the city’s recesses, smooth-hewn darkness where there is nothing at all to see or know or compel.

And it crumbles around him, brought to heel by the hammers. And, next, the rubble floods over with goading water, and that, itself, turns to mist as wind carries fire into the fray, the last belch of that awful chimney, and it all just… sweeps away, leaves them in a dull, vague fog that, too, will dissipate in time.

And that is. That _ is _.

And then there is _ them _. 

There is _ alone-made-not _ , there is the witness of the heart, the hand, the reaching out to clarify the reality of a friend, returned, safe and crying as he is, too, and solid and real and _ here _.

“Jon?”

Gasped like he can’t believe it. And, well, Jon will hardly fault him for that. Faith is a hard thing to contend with, and he _ did _ just defeat the Lonely, entire, to make peace with his own. He can forgive Martin for his reservations, the stricken hope that wears his face too well, too… sharply, such that Jon wants nothing more than to hide it against his own, soothe it away with whispers and touches and - 

He’ll be that faith for Martin. Until it can find a more amenable form, he’ll hold himself steadfast against whatever tide may try to claim him. Doubt, fear, all of it, Jon will weather for him.

For his part, Martin appears hardly sated, a thousand questions burning bright in his eyes, his hands shaking. And Jon almost takes them, almost reaches them, but Martin, as ever, catches him entirely off guard, and Jon finds himself pulled into a crushing, perfect embrace, Martin burying his face in his hair, sighing deep and contented and only _ just _ shuddering.

And how… _ here _ he is, pressed to Jon’s chest, wrapping him up. How little Jon has known of - of anything tangible in this place. Everything existed in an upheaval of itself, but Martin is _ only _ himself. Only real and here and going absolutely _ nowhere _. Jon will see to that.

“I didn’t think I’d - that you would -”

Though it pains him greatly, Jon pulls back, just a bit, just enough, so he can capture Martin’s gaze in his own, show him the clarity, the honesty of his eyes, that he would do this forever and over and _ over _ again, regardless of the result, regardless of what he _ knew _. 

Because this was not performed in an act of knowing. He thrust himself into the Lonely on hope, enough for the both of them, enough for whatever eternity it might have taken to find Martin again. He didn’t know that at the time, thought he might best the place with his own sense of hubris. 

He <strike> knows </strike> now. 

“It’s over,” he says, so complete and sure, that the very fog still lingering around them in gaunt wisps recoils. “I’m here and - and _ you’re _ here and it’s… it’s over, Martin.”

He laughs, then, at the awe in Martin’s expression.

“Just don’t go bloody lauding me as some hero. You’d have done the same.”

“I,” Martin blushes, the red of it visible even in the grey-wash light. “I suppose so - but -”

He chews at his lower lip, clearly deliberating, but damned if Jon can assume anything from him. He’s not certain he didn’t wipe the entirety of Beholding from his person. In fact, he could care less if he did.

Such it is, then, that he could hardly foresee what happens next, the slight… incline of Martin’s head, curls falling across his eyes again, the tightening of fingers at the base of his spine where Martin’s hands still hold him, the impossible _ care _ with which he leans in, sets their mouths a millimeter apart, exhales a soft breath against Jon’s lips, and then -

Oh. _ Oh _.

Precious and unpracticed is the kiss, a humid press of lips with a sensation of _ sweetness _ when Jon allows Martin to lift his chin, to deepen it. 

“_ Oh _,” he breathes, and Martin smiles against his gasp, kisses the corner of his mouth, leans away, but only so that he can look back at Jon, see the surprise that slips from his eyes, down his cheeks.

Martin kisses them, too, drying the warmth, the wet, the salt. 

“I think,” he whispers at length, closing his eyes as he leans his forehead to Jon’s.

He doesn’t finish. Doesn’t have to.

Jon knows.

_ This _, he knows. Not as an Archivist, not as a ploy, nor a plot point amidst machinations. For himself and for Martin he simply… knows. 

And as the Lonely dissolves around them, unburdening them of its fog, as they hold one another, content to endure the tide of whatever is next to result… Regardless of pain, of uncertainty, of _ I-couldn’t-care-less-anymore-not-if-it’s-with-you _. In the arms of a friend, in the melt of mouths and smiles and laughter and tears... 

In this, he knows faith. 

And he knows that it is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> It is also my sole mission in life to rope as many people as possible into Arcade Fire so,, the title comes from Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice) pls give it a listen and the companion title It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus). I've seen two other artists quote these songs and that sort of inspired this fic so yeah. Also comments literally make my entire week, I'd love to hear back~


End file.
